Last time, we tracked four players who scored on their Premier League debut and then essentially stopped. Morata, Antony, Nkunku, Edouard — combined cost £284 million, combined consistency: close to zero. But they are not alone. The Premier League's debut goal curse runs deep, and the next four cases are just as brutal — and in some ways, even stranger. Because this time the failures come in different shapes: the ghost midfielder, the record signing who became a punchline, the cult hero who played himself into a national scandal, and the £85 million striker who left having won the title but still somehow felt like a disappointment.
Donny van de Beek: Manchester United's Most Expensive Bench-Warmer
Few signings in Premier League history have been as immediately, comprehensively wasted as Donny van de Beek. The Dutchman arrived at Manchester United in September 2020 for an initial £35 million from Ajax — the same Ajax side that had reached the Champions League semi-finals in 2019, tearing apart Real Madrid and Juventus along the way. Van de Beek had been central to that run, a midfielder capable of arriving late into the box, pressing intelligently from the front, and linking play with a first touch that made the game look easy.
On 19 September 2020, he came off the bench in a 3-1 home defeat to Crystal Palace and scored. He became the 20th Manchester United player to score on their Premier League debut — joining a list that includes Ruud van Nistelrooy, Marcus Rashford, and Zlatan Ibrahimovic. The company was elite. The career that followed was not.
Over four years at Old Trafford, van de Beek made 36 appearances in his debut season alone — but rarely started, rarely influenced outcomes, and rarely seemed trusted by Ole Gunnar Solskjaer regardless of his form in training. The arrival of Erik ten Hag in 2022 — the manager who had coached van de Beek at Ajax and understood him better than anyone — raised genuine hope of a resurrection. Instead, van de Beek suffered a season-ending knee injury in January 2023 and never truly came back. He left for Eintracht Frankfurt in 2024, his Manchester United career producing just one Premier League goal involvement beyond that debut strike.
Van de Beek scored on his debut against Crystal Palace, joining Ruud van Nistelrooy and Marcus Rashford on United's list of Premier League debutant scorers. He would not score again in the league for three and a half years.
The deeper injustice is that van de Beek was never truly given the chance to fail. He was benched, loaned to Everton mid-season in 2022, and left to deteriorate as a player who was perpetually almost in the squad. At Everton he showed flickers — scoring in the final game of the 2021-22 season to help them avoid relegation in genuinely dramatic circumstances. But those brief moments only underlined what United had squandered: a technically complete midfielder, wasted for four years because managers could not find a system to accommodate him. The debut goal was not a false impression. It was a preview of a player United never bothered to watch.
Tanguy Ndombele: Spurs' £63 Million One-Hit Wonder
On 10 August 2019, Tottenham Hotspur were 1-0 down to newly promoted Aston Villa at their gleaming new stadium. Their record signing — £55 million initial, up to £63 million including add-ons, making him the most expensive player in Spurs' history — was on the pitch in his first Premier League start. The situation called for someone to do something extraordinary.
Tanguy Ndombele picked up the ball 25 yards from goal, shifted his weight, and curled a precision shot into the corner to level it at 1-1. Spurs came back to win 3-1 with two late Harry Kane goals. Ndombele had the moment, the goal, and the noise of a packed new stadium. Mauricio Pochettino called it a sign of his quality. Spurs fans dared to believe they had finally signed the midfielder of a generation.
Over the next five years, Ndombele scored nine more goals in 90 further appearances across all competitions — and barely any of them came at a time when he was trusted, consistent, or anywhere near the player that 25-yard debut curler had suggested. His issues became multiple: fitness was inconsistent, application was questioned by multiple managers, and José Mourinho — never a man to soften a message — publicly stated that other players deserved to start ahead of him after a dismal 1-1 draw with Burnley in March 2020. The criticism from Mourinho was significant because it was specific: Ndombele was being dropped not for a lack of talent, but for a lack of effort and reliability.
He went out on loan to Lyon in January 2022, then to Napoli — where he won Serie A in 2022-23 — then to Galatasaray. By 2024, Spurs cancelled his contract by mutual agreement, ending a relationship that had cost the club £63 million and produced very little of what that debut goal had promised. He moved to Nice on a free transfer. For Spurs, it remains one of the most expensive midfield mistakes the Premier League has ever seen.
Jesé Rodríguez: The Wildest Debut-to-Disaster Story in Premier League History
Of all the players in these two articles, Jesé Rodríguez is the one whose story is hardest to categorise — because it stopped being a football story almost immediately after his debut and became something else entirely. Jesé arrived at Stoke City on loan from Paris Saint-Germain in August 2017. He had arrived at PSG the summer before for €22 million from Real Madrid, where — playing behind Bale, Benzema, and Ronaldo — he had somehow managed a goal or assist every 100 minutes whenever he got on the pitch. The talent was undeniable. The circumstances were perpetually against him.
Stoke gave him an immediate start. On 19 August 2017, having trained with his new teammates just once, Jesé picked up the ball in his own half, drove forward, and slid a low finish past Petr Cech from a tight angle 90 seconds into the second half. Stoke beat Arsenal 1-0 — one of the most prestigious scalps of that opening weekend — and Jesé was the match-winner. Arsène Wenger complained. Stoke fans celebrated. A 24-year-old who had barely unpacked his bags had just beaten the Gunners on his first appearance.
What followed was one of the most chaotic loan spells in Premier League memory. By December, Jesé had been granted compassionate leave to visit his prematurely born son in hospital in Madrid — which was entirely understandable. But his absences became longer and more frequent. There was a dressing room row with Charlie Adam over who would take a penalty against Brighton — Jesé wanted to take it, veteran midfielder Adam refused to give it up, and the dispute became public. By March 2018, with Stoke sliding toward relegation, Jesé had effectively ceased to feature. The club eventually confirmed his loan was terminated and he would not be returning, citing ongoing personal circumstances. He finished with 1 goal in 13 appearances, and Stoke were relegated that season.
Jesé's Stoke loan is not simply a tale of a flop. It is the story of a player whose personal life made football impossible, whose debut suggested one thing and whose circumstances delivered something entirely different. He was never really given a fair run at the Premier League. According to Transfermarkt, he played just 632 Premier League minutes across his entire career. The debut goal against Arsenal is almost all there is.
Darwin Núñez: £85 Million of Goals, Misses, and Mixed Feelings
Darwin Núñez is a different case from the rest — and it's important to say that clearly. Unlike van de Beek, Ndombele, or Jesé, the Uruguayan was not a failure at Liverpool. He scored 40 goals in 143 appearances, won the Premier League title in 2024-25, and contributed meaningfully to one of the most decorated periods in the club's history. And yet, somehow, the conversation around Núñez throughout his three years at Anfield was dominated by what he missed rather than what he scored.
It started brilliantly. On his Premier League debut at Fulham in August 2022, coming off the bench in the second half, Núñez scored and provided the assist for Mohamed Salah's equaliser as Liverpool drew 2-2. Liverpool paid an initial £64.2 million — rising to £85 million with add-ons — for a player who had scored 26 goals in 28 Liga Portugal games for Benfica that season. The debut ticked every box. He looked powerful, direct, clever in tight spaces, and lethal when the ball arrived in the right areas.
Then the misses started. Not occasional misses — spectacular, almost theatrical ones that became clip compilations and debate fodder. Headed chances skewed wide. One-on-ones missed. Goals that appeared certain converted into non-goals with bewildering regularity. His underlying numbers, as tracked on FBRef, showed a player consistently underperforming his expected goals — meaning that even by objective statistical measure, he was wasting more chances than comparable strikers. By his third season he was competing with Luis Díaz, Cody Gakpo, and Diogo Jota for minutes, and was often the fourth choice in attack.
When Liverpool sold him to Al Hilal in the summer of 2025 for a reported initial €53 million — significantly below his purchase fee — there was no real mourning at Anfield, even though he had been part of a title-winning squad. That tells you something. The debut goal at Fulham set up an expectation: a centre-forward built for the Premier League's intensity, a replacement for the reliable output the club had been missing since Roberto Firmino. What he delivered was more complicated, more inconsistent, and ultimately more dispensable than £85 million should have allowed.
The Pattern Behind the Previews
Across these eight players — four from Part One, four from Part Two — a consistent thread emerges that is worth naming. Each debut goal was followed by a different kind of failure: Morata's confidence collapsed, Antony became predictable, Nkunku ran out of luck with injuries, Edouard couldn't handle the step up in intensity. Van de Beek was never trusted. Ndombele lost the managers' confidence. Jesé lost himself entirely. Núñez lost the battle against his own inconsistency.
But none of the debut goals themselves were flukes. Every single one was technically accomplished — a composed finish, a clinical header, a curled drive from 25 yards. These were real footballers showing real ability. The debut goal is football's most seductive lie: it confirms what the scouts said, validates the fee paid, and silences the doubters for exactly one match. The problem is that the Premier League doesn't ask you to be brilliant once. It asks you to be good enough, week after week, in November cold and February mud, against organised defences with full scouting reports on your habits.
That is a different ask entirely. And the gap between the debut goal and that ask is exactly where £370 million — the combined cost of these latest four players — went to die.
